Bought my tickets for another train ride to the land of my birth and my brother’s house therein for Christmas. And as experience is the great teacher I’ve sprung for the full bedroom on the two night two and a half day trip from Chicago to Los Angles so I can have my own bathroom and shower, and that lovely extra space and that lovely wider bed to sleep in. If you buy your tickets this far in advance you get the best price, and since I’m over 62 I get an additional senior discount.

Below is a better, if somewhat distorted view of an Amtrak full bedroom. It’s a bigger, nicer room, but there isn’t a lot of space to maneuver a camera to get a good shot of the inside. There is no place to back up and take a shot, so you need a super wide angle, or in this case, a fisheye…

The curtains on the right are over the door to the room. There is a small closet to the right of it, where you can hang coats. Above it the second bunk bed is folded up against the ceiling. To the left is a sink, mirror and cabinet for holding your shaving stuff. There are electrical outlets against the wall. The doors below it are service access that don’t open for passengers, and in the middle a trash can flap. The door further to the right opens into your own private bathroom and shower. The mirror and the chair in front of it are hanging on a door that Amtrak personnel can open to make two bedrooms into one larger room for families. It’s the one weak spot in the whole affair: that door is flimsy and if your neighbors are even slightly loud you will hear everything. So I will take my ear plugs and white noise maker, just in case. 

For an overnight, a basic roomette is just fine for me, a solitary traveler. But the two night trip from Chicago to Los Angles on the Southwest Chief is more than I want to spend in a roomette without its own sink and toilet like the Viewliner roomettes have. So I spend the extra money. The saving grace of it is I can probably have it paid off by the time I actually take the ride this December.